News Roundup: Hotfixes and New Honor Gear

Blizzard sometimes makes mistakes and today was all about addressing them apparently--there are a lot of hotfixes to read that fix 4.2's bigger problems and there's also a blue explanation for the PvP gear.

Regarding the PvP gear situation for those who don't PvP (or didn't log on yet), they gave us new season 10 gear that was purchasable with honor without requirements. This came right after season 9 gear became available last week for honor and similarly without requirements. This means lot of people farmed honor all last week since new gear was available and will now have to farm it again for the ilevel increased season 10 gear--which is actually the same season 9 gear with massively increased stats.

This is a pretty major change; it's streamlining PvP gear for those who don't do RBGs or arenas much like how they streamlined valor points for those who don't raid. Much like how you can get a decent PvE set without doing heroic modes or raiding hardcore, you can now get a great PvP set without having to live in the arena. Like any major change, it's being received very negatively, largely in part to this lack of announcement and foresight.

P.S. The best hotfix? There are now more wounded defenders in Hyjal for the dailies! Seriously, those dailies were brutal on high population servers at peak times.

July 6

General

An issue has been corrected that would cause players to lose their progress towards Veteran of the Horde II, Veteran of the Alliance II, Warbringer of the Horde, or Warbound Veteran of the Alliance if Veteran of the Horde or Veteran of the Alliance were complete.

Classes

Characters should no longer disconnect or receive movement enforcement errors when certain spells, abilities, or item effects are used while on moving transports.

When using Spellsteal on a shaman, Lava Flows will no longer be given to the mage as a buff. The buff, however, will be removed from the shaman.

Priests

Shadowfiend is now causing the casting priest to enter combat when cast on enemy players.

Shaman

A Fulmination critical strike for more than 30,000 damage (10-player) or 45,000 damage (25-player) should now properly interrupt Rageface’s Face Rage in the Firelands.

When Lava Flows is stolen by a mage via Spellsteal, the mage will no longer gain the Lava Flows buff.

Dungeons & Raids

Firelands

Heroic difficulty has been activated and is accessible in all regions.

Pet corpses, guardians, and placed items should no longer provoke Engorged Broodlings to a premature detonation.

The pack of creatures fighting each other around Flamewaker Beast Handlers will stop fighting each other and attack the raid once provoked.

Flamewaker Subjugators now award 50 reputation, up from 15, while Flamewaker Animators award no reputation or loot.

The aggro radius on the third pack of Hells Hounds on the way to Beth’tilac has been reduced.

Unstable Pyrelords now have an active stealth detection aura present when the gauntlet is triggered which prevents stealth classes from traversing up the hill undetected.

Baleroc

Baleroc’s health has been increased on 10-player Heroic difficulty.

Baleroc's gate now despawns properly when he resets.

Shards of Torment despawn when Baleroc resets even if they are spawned after Baleroc has despawned.

Lord Rhyolith

Lord Rhyolith can now be quickly snapped from left to right, or right to left, if the appropriate amount of damage is dealt to the opposite foot.

Lord Rhyolith now prefers to activate volcanoes that are in front of him over volcanoes that are behind him.

Lord Rhyolith now spawns slightly further back on his platform, allowing players to stand on the edge of the terrain and not aggro him.

Lord Rhyolith no longer despawns when reaching the end of the encounter area, and does not despawn when casting Drink Magma from any of the possible locations.

Lord Rhyolith now summons in volcanoes when intended, and it is no longer possible for the first set of volcanoes to be ignored.

Majordomo Staghelm

Majordomo Staghelm has had his health increased by 10% on Heroic difficulty.

Ragnaros

Living Meteors no longer evade and return to their spawn point when their original target dies or uses a threat drop. They will instead choose a new target.

The Sons of Flame can no longer be missed by melee attacks and abilities.

Shannox

Shannox will now rotate when appropriate instead of moving to get in range of his target while being tanked.

Shannox will always use Hurl Spear after a raid wipes, even if Riplimb collapsed just prior to the group wiping.

Items

Jamus’Vaz and Faldren Tillsdale are once again offering players Conquest Points in exchange for Valor Points.

Normal and Heroic versions of Deflecting Star now correctly bind when picked up.

Eternal Embers are now epic quality.

Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.

Ruthless, Vicious, and Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Clasps of Cruelty have had their Stamina values increased to remain consistent with equivalent belts. Note that the tooltip will require a patch to update.

Quests & Creatures

Hyjal Regrowth & Molten Front

Players are now receiving 6 Marks of the World Tree from Caught Unawares and 10 marks from The Sanctuary Must Not Fall, which now allows players to obtain 20 marks as soon as they finish their first days’ worth of daily quests and unlock the Molten Front. The amount of marks offered is properly updated in player Quest Logs as well.

There are now many more Wounded Hyjal Defenders to accommodate a large concurrency of players in the Molten Front.

The Fiery Behemoths and Molten Behemoths are now the same size.

Rayne Feathersong has been moved from the cave and is still available as a daily quest giver at Malfurion's Breach.

The PvP Season 10 Gear "Disaster"

Thanks for making a clear-cut thread summarizing why this is a big issue within the PvP community, Tauranewone. To keep communication on this as clear as possible, I'll try and clarify what has happened with the transition between Seasons 9 and 10, as well as give you our take. For everyone reading along, please do not create new threads on this issue. We'll be primarily watching this one and would prefer to keep our forums as easy to read as possible.

Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.

First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:

1) We noted that Conquest Points were going to be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap with the release of patch 4.2, giving players one week to spend these excess points before the start of Season 10, at which point the 4,000 point cap would go into effect. Instead, the Honor Point cap intended to be enforced yesterday was applied at the same time Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points with patch 4.2. This led many players who saved Conquest Points up for the season transition to receive gold for any Honor Points above 4,000, rather than points above that cap. There wasn't a feasible solution for correcting the fact that the calculations had been run a week early.

2) We didn't notify players that we made a slight change to the way PvP gear is introduced each season. The change simply wasn't communicated among all of the other patch 4.2 changes, which was a big oversight on our part.

These two errors compounded each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.

Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:

1) During any season, a low tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Honor Points. 2) During any season, a high tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Conquest Points. 3) At the end of any season, any remaining Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap. 4) In between seasons, the previous high tier of items become available for purchase with Honor Points, allowing anyone who could not previously afford them with CP one last chance to buy them using the excess Honor Points. 5) The new season begins. Honor Points are capped at 4,000 again. The previous season's sets are removed and replaced with current-season HP and CP items.

We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.

That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.

If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share.

On Racials and Raiding AKA Play What You Want To

Racial traits primarily exist to add flavor to each race, and to a lesser extent, situational advantages in line with the theme of each race. Naturally each one works better in some situations than others.

A player who wishes to can and should raid as Forsaken, or any other race that they enjoy playing. It's extremely unlikely that if a player has proven themselves capable, that a competent raid leader would turn them away based on their character's race. There are, after all, a very healthy number of Forsaken raiders active at this very moment.

Comments

Comment by lightshammer

Comment by killdar80

on 2011-07-07T00:35:38-05:00

ty zarhym for the info on season 10 gear disaster. :)

Comment by Torvus2

on 2011-07-07T01:27:40-05:00

You know, after wrathgate i still love my forsaken DK. Dare I say, I like forsaken more... Just solidifies the fact that the forsaken are only using the horde as a stepping stone. Even if Putress was a traitor.

Comment by geniusdude

on 2011-07-07T01:56:11-05:00

You know, after wrathgate i still love my forsaken DK. Dare I say, I like forsaken more... Just solidifies the fact that the forsaken are only using the horde as a stepping stone. Even if Putress was a traitor.

Don't look so smug! I know what you're thinking, but the Horde was merely a set back. Did you honestly believe I would trust the future to some green orc mongrel? Hahahaha... Oh no, no, no, they were merely an instrument, a stepping stone to a much larger plan! It has all led to this...and this time, you will not interfere!

Comment by Azrile

on 2011-07-07T02:17:03-05:00

Are you being a little dramatic

¨which is actually the same season 9 gear with massively increased stats.'

The gear upgrade from what people bought last week with honor compared to what they can buy this week is half a tier. Serious pvpers are swamped in honor the same way most serious pvers don´t have much need for JP (other than BOEs) already. Players who ground out honor last week to buy the items, are now going to be grinding conquest to replace them... while the main mission is to get conquest, they will also be getting a ton of honor, which they can upgrade some pieces with the new honor gear. The end result is in a few days, some players may have an item or two that is half a tier below ´what they should have´. But most importantly, in a week, nobody is going to be doing anything important with the honor.

It was definitely silly of Blizzard to bump both tiers up.. but there is no real competitive advantage since people who didn´t spend honor last week were capped at 4k anyway. I am in that group. I didnt spend my honor last week, so now I can have 2 pieces of gear that are half a tier above what someone has who did buy last week? big deal.. i will still get owned.

Comment by AdituSunlock

on 2011-07-07T04:12:25-05:00

There are now many more Wounded Hyjal Defenders to accommodate a large concurrency of players in the Molten Front.

Yay, that was gripe one.

Next, does anyone know if the 'helpers' you get to kill mobs at Sethria's Roost are working as intended or if they are going to fix them? To the very least it's very annoying to have to run a few hundred yards away and wait till your helpers are either dead or have killed whatever they are after before you can go about your business, but much worse, if I'm PvP-flagged or or a PvP-server they will attack me, even if the player they 'belong to' does not want to. Said player can't even stop them.

You regularly see clumps of players at the far end of the Roost idly waiting till they are out of their involuntary combat.

Comment by Nerfpl

on 2011-07-07T04:17:58-05:00

And once again strip the fun in sake of balance

Cant steal lava flows? lol? Why even bother then; why they alter spellsteal mechanic only for this one skill? messCant stealth in FL? wtf? I thought stealth is perk, not the curse to be punished for. Her's a cookie, you can look at it or throw it around but you cant eat it.

We all have to be equal! If you cant have fun so do others! F****** brilliant....

Comment by Alkony

on 2011-07-07T04:50:56-05:00

Are you being a little dramatic

¨which is actually the same season 9 gear with massively increased stats.'

The gear upgrade from what people bought last week with honor compared to what they can buy this week is half a tier. Serious pvpers are swamped in honor the same way most serious pvers don´t have much need for JP (other than BOEs) already. Players who ground out honor last week to buy the items, are now going to be grinding conquest to replace them... while the main mission is to get conquest, they will also be getting a ton of honor, which they can upgrade some pieces with the new honor gear. The end result is in a few days, some players may have an item or two that is half a tier below ´what they should have´. But most importantly, in a week, nobody is going to be doing anything important with the honor.

It was definitely silly of Blizzard to bump both tiers up.. but there is no real competitive advantage since people who didn´t spend honor last week were capped at 4k anyway. I am in that group. I didnt spend my honor last week, so now I can have 2 pieces of gear that are half a tier above what someone has who did buy last week? big deal.. i will still get owned.

I read through some of the thread the blue comment is from, and someone had done an analysis of the stat differences. Realistically, it's close to a 10% difference, which when facing an equal, intelligent foe (rather than a static one like in PvE) can be a major disparity.

Keep in mind I don't PvP if I can help it.

People who spent hours grinding out the last Honor needed to finish the S9 Vicious set (ilvl 365) in the week after 4.2 dropped are unlikely to have kept 4k Honor for this week (why would they if they completed the set?). This puts them at a disadvantage to people who, like Azrile above, didn't empty their stockpile of Honor to gear up.

There's also the gold and mats that go into enchanting gear. The players who were getting ready to jump out of the starting gates on Tuesday with the new Season already spent those on their S9 set. This means they have to farm the honor and the gold/mats all over again.

Blizzard made no mention of this in any official setting. Not only that, none of the sets was available even to data mine so there was ZERO warning. They even made an "oops our bad" about the Honor hard cap being applied early but didn't mention the new set. (Wowhead doesn't even

If this affected me, I'd be seriously miffed. Not only did players waste time, gold, mats and Honor, the response so far has been "Huh, that shouldn't have happened. We'll look into it."

`````Also, apparently this is going to be the new Season program for WoW, which means there's little point in finishing up a set of Season X Conquest gear when Season X+1 is going to be released soon. The first couple weeks are going to be swamped with people faceroll farming Honor in normal BGs to gear up for RBGs and Arenas.

Comment by MasterLB

on 2011-07-07T05:59:47-05:00

Wait... people still play forsaken? Geez pick a real race :3 like goblins haha.

Comment by Iceveiled

on 2011-07-07T11:18:47-05:00

I'm trying to buy one of the season 9 ranged weapons for my hunter since I wasn't fortunate enough to have any drop in my 10 man group so far (I'm using a heroic dungeon blue currently). I keep getting an error saying I still need to earn 4XXX more honor points before I can even purchase that piece, even though I have the required honor to buy it. So it's like I have to purchase something ELSE before I reach the 4000 cap, then keep farming them until I once again have enough honor points to buy the season 9 ranged weapon?

So does this mean I have to farm so many honor points in the current PVP season before last seaons gear can be purchased? The game isn't very clear on this.

Comment by cubelord

on 2011-07-07T11:20:51-05:00

Regarding race - there are certain times when I'm glad I play a Dwarf as a tank, a Draenei as a healer, or an Undead for pvp. Certain racial abilities DO end up being a little more useful in some situations than others (Stoneform is a godsend, not only for the 10% damage reduction but also the poison/disease/bleed dispel.) But I still feel that despite the advantage they offer, it isn't enough to make one race decidedly better than others.

Comment by pnkflffytutu

on 2011-07-07T11:58:32-05:00

And once again strip the fun in sake of balance

Cant steal lava flows? lol? Why even bother then; why they alter spellsteal mechanic only for this one skill? messCant stealth in FL? wtf? I thought stealth is perk, not the curse to be punished for. Her's a cookie, you can look at it or throw it around but you cant eat it.

We all have to be equal! If you cant have fun so do others! F****** brilliant....

Comment by Interest

@PvP Gear stuff: That also makes obsolete the purpose of doing battlegrounds on honor capped characters for a week... =( I'd just prefer the "new" Season gear to be...:

-Implemented immediately, with the point conversion happening when the season starts only (meaning it would probably happen one week after a patch release, in this case).

-Implement the Honor purchaseable gear when the patch hits and implement the Conquest purchaseable gear later if the season starts after the patch.

-Boost the bloody point cap?

@Racials:

Don't have anything to say. I stopped taking part in that QQ long ago.

Comment by Azrile

on 2011-07-07T12:20:17-05:00

Also remember, that the day this went live, those pvpers were doing things for conquest points, so probably were getting a ton of honor on the very first day. While they are pvping that first day in their full sets, they are competing against people like me who have 1 or 2 pieces of the new gear, but also don´t have the remaining old pieces (because we didn´t spend out honor last week). It is a wash... we have a few pieces above theirs, but the majority below.

The people complaining and doing the analysis are taking an absolute worst case scenerio (that people who bought the honor gear last week were in nothing but that gear) and comparing it to someone who went into this week ´magically´ in the new full honor gear on tuesday. On tuesday, I did not start with the new full honor gear.. I started with 2 pieces.... my other 16 pieces were BELOW what the people who did spend their honor last week have. I bet even today, there are still very few people who have all the new honor gear.... and the people who spent all their honor last week?... they probably have almost the same number of peices.

It was annoying that it wasn´t announced, and it is a bit annoying because of gems and enchants... but the cost of enchants is dismal right now.

Comment by soccergenius

on 2011-07-07T12:48:09-05:00

I had collected various points to go into the patch with the maximum amount of honor points only to find all my conquest points converted to gold. I don't need to gold, I would have rather have had the honor. Then I find that the 365 gear is obsolete now. If I had known that, I would not have bothered collecting the points in the first place. I was doing heroics and converting points, not grinding BGs, nor did I enchant/gem my gear but a lot of people did.

I hope Blizzard learns from their recent SNAFU, it's unlike them and their customers expect better.

The Lava Flows change is good, as it stood it was penalizing Shamans for having the talent, not benefiting them.

Comment by ZombieJesus

on 2011-07-07T12:53:25-05:00

Nothing of interest here.

Now if they said that Frost DK's were bugged and generated more aggro than intended... I'd be a happy tank.

Comment by Interest

on 2011-07-08T12:57:58-05:00

Nothing of interest here.

Now if they said that Frost DK's were bugged and generated more aggro than intended... I'd be a happy tank.

Arms Warriors are a pain to hold against too (if they're good or Bladestorming)

Comment by BruceVonHammer

on 2011-07-08T13:31:02-05:00

Wait... people still play forsaken? Geez pick a real race :3 like Trolls haha.

Fixed that for ya.

Comment by Nerfpl

on 2011-07-09T16:35:56-05:00

Nothing of interest here.

Now if they said that Frost DK's were bugged and generated more aggro than intended... I'd be a happy tank.

Arms Warriors are a pain to hold against too (if they're good or Bladestorming)

Also have similar feeling on Retri pally.Maybe its for all plate users? (every time i click my cd's (AV zeal etc) i think "now im gonna get aggro -_- ")

Comment by Damnedhooligan

on 2011-07-12T03:19:41-05:00

CRAAAAAP I spent a ton of honor points this week, now the stuff that is available is better, less than 1 week after I bought it. Ok Blizz, I am the customer and I am cranky! Whatcha gonna do about it? Give us the same song and dance, working as intended or just plain old STFU we don't care?

You shoulda told us! For me as a PVP'r every little bit helps. Give us some love now or risk losing us to Star Wars the Old Republic with prejudice!